Love and Breakfast Cereal
by blipblopblork
Summary: Few realized that when Gus referred to himself as the "vault of secrets", he was only half joking. But after what happened today, Gus isn't sure if he can keep this a secret anymore. Episode tag/alternate ending to S04E13: Death is in the Air. Shus.


**Author's Note: ** This story was written for _talitha78_, who won a 'ficlet of at least 450 words' from me in the Sweet Charity auction. As you can see, I got a bit carried away. ^_^ Her prompt was "Shawn genuinely hurts Gus's feelings and has to find a way to make up for it.", and this fic would have been nothing if not for my amazing beta _dergerm_ who really helped me to completely overhaul my first draft and who insisted that I couldn't do this story justice without including little Shawn and Gus. Lastly, I totally ripped Captain Delicious cereal off of a fic I read a while back - it was just something that someone happened to be eating in someone else's story and I loved it so much I decided it needed to be Psychverse fanon. I don't remember who that author was, otherwise I'd totally credit them too. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the story!

------------- 1989--------------

"Shawn! Give that back!" Gus protested angrily, looking longingly at the shiny new secret decoder ring that Shawn had just pulled from the previously unopened box of Captain Delicious cereal. Gus had been looking forward to that ring, had begged his mother for what felt like weeks to buy Captain Delicious so he could have that ring, and now Shawn had snatched it up with his grubby little fingers before Gus had even had a chance to see if it was really as perfect as it looked in the picture on the box.

"No way! Finders keepers!" Shawn pulled the precious toy closer to his chest.

"You didn't _find_ that, you stole it. We're at my house and it's my cereal, so that makes it my decoder ring!" Gus protested, making a swipe for the ring, but Shawn was too quick for him.

"And what are you gonna do about it?" Shawn countered, "Tell your..."

"Moooooommmmmmmmmmm!" Shawn didn't have to finish his sentence, as Gus did it for him. Within seconds, Winnie Guster appeared in the kitchen.

"Yes, sweetie?" she asked as she surveyed the scene before her.

"Shawn took my decoder ring!" Gus whined.

"Burton, can I have a word with you?" His mother sounded sweet as she beckoned him toward the hallway, but Gus was not that easily deceived - this couldn't mean anything good. "Shawn, I promise I'll return him to you in a second."

Sure enough, once Shawn was out of earshot, Gus's suspicions were confirmed.

"Burton, what have I told you about being a good host?"

Silence. Gus knew he wasn't expected to answer, this was what his teacher at school liked to call a 'rhetorical question'. Gus was proud that he not only knew what that meant, but could spell it too.

"There will be other cereal box prizes, Burton, I promise. But Shawn is a guest in our home, so I want you to go back to the kitchen now and tell him you're sorry."

Gus sighed. His mother just didn't get it. This wasn't just some cereal box prize, it was _the_ Captain Delicious secret decoder ring! Without a Captain Delicious secret decoder ring, you couldn't be part of Captain Delicious' Super Secret Spy League! Grown-ups could be so stupid sometimes. But Gus knew that arguing was no use - his mother could be very stubborn when she wanted to - so he just shrugged and went back to the table.

"Shawn, I'm sorry..." Better to say it now than to hesitate and have his mother prompt him with a "Now what do you say, Burton?" That would just be humiliating.

"You can keep the ring." Gus whispered, reluctant to let the words out.

"I can? Sweet!" Shawn shoved the coveted prize into his pocket as Gus looked on with envy.

Unfortunately, as it would turn out, Gus never did get to join Captain Delicious' Super Secret Spy League. Gus's father absentmindedly threw away the next empty box of Captain Delicious before Gus had a chance to retrieve the prize, and shortly thereafter the promotion was discontinued due to the potential choking hazard. Gus was incredulous. Who could be stupid enough to accidentally eat a Captain Delicious secret decoder ring? But then again, he wouldn't put it past Mikey, the boy who lived down the street. That kid would eat _anything._

------------- present day ----------------

Gus sucked idly on a spoonful of cereal as the television flickered in the darkness before him. His blue button down was rumpled, and a few flakes of cereal lay scattered across the coffee table and floor, but aside from that, the apartment was pristine. Everybody had their own way of handling stress, Gus knew - Detective Lassiter would head down to the shooting range (and probably visualize a certain psychic in place of the target), Shawn would hop on his motorcycle and bike off to god-knows-where, and Gus... Gus was a cleaner. And tonight, he had polished every surface, swept every last crumb off the floor. The Windex and the soap had served as proxy for the tears he was too proud to shed, until at last Gus was forced to admit that as brightly as his apartment shone, he was still in a dark place, and there was nothing left to do but curl up on the couch with a spoon in one hand and the TV remote in the other and wait for the feeling to pass. Something told him it was going to be a while.

_"Speak now or forever hold your peace."_

Gus didn't have the slightest idea what movie he was watching, nor did he particularly care. But suddenly, the deep voice booming from the television caught his attention. He glanced up just in time to catch the tail end of what appeared to be an obnoxiously dramatic wedding scene. The preacher had just spoken, and this, naturally, was the hero's cue to rush in and rescue his beloved from being married off to the wrong man. At least, Gus figured that was supposed to be the beloved - there had to be a woman hidden_ somewhere_ under that giant froofy cupcake of taffeta and lace standing where the bride should be.

Gus rolled his eyes.

_Great, just what I need right now_. _To see somebody else's happily ever after._ Gus thought as he dug in for another spoonful of Captain Delicious. He wondered whether that particular line was still commonly spoken at weddings, or whether it was just a remnant of days of yore that was now reserved for only the cheesiest of Hollywood movies. He suspected it was the latter, but still, if it ever came up at Shawn's wedding - if Shawn ever found a woman crazy enough to marry him and _have_ a wedding, that is - Gus knew exactly what he would say.

Nothing.

Or at least that had been the plan. People (namely, Madeleine Spencer) often accused Shawn of being the one who bottled too much inside - Gus himself liked to think of him as an emotional volcano, keeping everything under the surface until BOOM!, without warning, things erupted in one giant cathartic explosion. But few realized that when Gus referred to himself as the "vault of secrets", he was only half joking. Gus had been keeping the same secret under lock and key for almost twenty years now, and he had been fully prepared to carry it with him to his grave. Unfortunately, as he had discovered this morning, Shawn wasn't the only one with a bit of volcano in him.

------------- 10 hours earlier... ----------------

As Gus and Shawn stood outside the hospital room watching Juliet and Lassiter awkwardly embrace on the other side of the soundproof glass, Shawn turned toward Gus with a defeated look in his eyes.

"Just don't say anything." Shawn started to put his hands up defensively, then seemed to think better of the gesture and dropped them.

"I wasn't..." What was there to say?

The pair let the awkward silence hang over them for a moment. Only for a moment, though - that was all Shawn could stand before he began to feel the silence smothering him.

"Actually, no. Do say something. Anything. What the hell just happened, Gus?"

"What?"

"You tried to stop me, man! You got in my head. I was going to tell her that I... that I..." What was wrong with him? He wasn't even talking to Jules anymore, yet he still couldn't bring himself to actually say the words.

"Love her?" Gus supplied.

"Yeah, that." Shawn nodded.

"Well, do you?"

"Of course I do! I mean, I think I do... thought I..." Shawn replayed the events of the last few minutes over in his mind's eye. Listening as Gus tried to talk him out of making his grand confession to Juliet. Watching as Gus burst into the hospital room to tell Juliet that she didn't have the Thornberg virus. Glancing over at Gus's unreadable stare through the window just as he had been about to say the three magic words that would have changed everything forever.

"You don't."

"Excuse me?" Shawn asked, incredulous that his friend would deign to tell him about his own feelings. After all, Shawn was the psychic, not Gus.

"You don't love her, Shawn." Gus's voice was firm, and he was looking Shawn right in the eye.

"What are you talking about? Since when do _you_ know anything about love?"

"I've been in lo..." Gus started.

"Mira doesn't count!" Shawn blurted out, cutting him off. _I wasn't talking about Mira_. Gus silently replied.

Hesitantly he placed a comforting hand on Shawn's shoulder, "Look, Shawn, when you love someone, you know them better than you know yourself..."

"Neither does that girl from the planetarium!" Gus quickly racked his brain trying to remember her name._ Jenny? Jacqueline? Ah, Jessica. That was it._

"...you can finish their sentences..."

"Or that 'secret girlfriend' of yours who was into all the extreme sports stuff!" Shawn had backed away slightly, shrugging off Gus's gesture of camaraderie.

Gus looked a little hurt, but kept on talking, "...willing to stand by them through anything, and you put up with whatever crap they drag you through..."

"By the way, not the best kept secret, Gus. I totally knew about her." Apparently, verbal diarrhea was the faux psychic's equivalent to clamping his hands over his ears, closing his eyes, and shouting 'lalalalala! I can't hear you!'. Yet Gus knew that even though Shawn didn't appear to be listening, he was hearing every word.

"... because they're worth it, and so even if you know that they don't love you back, you just keep your feelings to yourself and stand by them anyways. You don't throw it at them when they're least expecting it. Even if that means keeping how you feel a secret for years and years! Dammit, Shawn! _That's_ what it means to be in love!" Gus was practically shouting now, he didn't know what had gotten into him, but with twenty years of bottled up emotion pouring out of him, there was nothing he could do but stand back and let the volcano erupt. He knew that the nurses and orderlies all the way down the hall were staring at him, but it didn't matter - they were the least of his problems.

_Oh my god, I just became the world's biggest hypocrite._

For once in his life, Shawn was speechless. Had Gus just said what he'd thought he said? Gus watched as Shawn stood dumbfounded, watched as the gears turned furiously inside Shawn's enigma of a brain. Not for the first time, Gus wished desperately that he knew what was going on in there. He watched as Shawn uneasily shifted his weight away from him. Could it truly be that Shawn Spencer, the man who saw everything, hadn't seen this coming? Finally Shawn spoke.

"You were the kind of kid who always had to eat all of the cereal first, weren't you?"

"What?"

But Gus didn't get an answer, because at that moment, Shawn turned on his heels and fled.

The credits had just started to roll when Gus heard the knock at the door. Gus yawned loudly as he realized that he must have fallen asleep, as he had not the slightest idea how the movie ended. Oh well, it was probably for the best anyways, a sappy romance like that would probably just have made him feel worse.

Groggily, he made his way up from the couch, spoon still in hand as he went to answer the door. Trying desperately not to get his hopes up, he mused silently about who could possibly be calling at such a late hour. Warily, he turned the knob.

"Shawn."

Gus stared out at his best friend, blinking a few times to make sure that really was Shawn and not just a figment of an overtired imagination standing there on his monogrammed welcome mat. Thankfully, when Gus opened his eyes again, Shawn was still there - motorcycle helmet under one arm and Jamba Juice cup in the other. He looked exhausted, like he'd been biking for hours.

Gus leaned against the doorframe, "I figured you'd be halfway to Mexico by now."

"Yeah, well. I would've, but I couldn't find my lucky sombrero. Thought maybe you'd seen it?"

Gus knew that Shawn didn't have a lucky sombrero, having sworn them off entirely after one too many games of 'How many hats?'. He just stared.

"I bought you a smoothie." Shawn proffered the plastic cup towards Gus.

"Shawn! That cup is half-empty!"

Shawn half-shrugged, "I prefer to view it as half full. Hey, I got thirsty on the way. It's the thought that counts, right?"

Gus shrugged and accepted the cup. He didn't really want a smoothie anyways, not after all that cereal, but Shawn did have a point.

"So you gonna let me in, or should we just stand out here all night?"

Gus wordlessly moved aside and let Shawn follow him into the apartment. That darned awkward silence was heavy in the air again, and Gus knew how hard it must be for Shawn not to say anything - not to tease him or crack a joke or fake a psychic vision, anything to drown out the emptiness. This time, it was Gus that broke the silence, or at least made the first attempt.

"Shawn..."

Shawn turned suddenly. "I'm not seventeen anymore, Gus!"

"What?" Of all of the things Gus had expected Shawn might say at that moment, this definitely wasn't one of them. Shawn was standing surprisingly still, and the look in his eyes was jarring.

"Give me a little credit. I'm not going to bike off and leave town every time things don't go my way. Especially when..." _when what? _What was 'Shawn's way', exactly? From the way his voice trailed off, Gus guessed that Shawn wasn't entirely sure himself. "...you're my best friend, Gus. I'm not going to just up and leave you here."

"That never stopped you before." _What's stopping you now?_

"I was seventeen!"

_That's no excuse, Shawn._ "I know, and I forgive you."

"You do?"

"Yeah." _I'll always forgive you_, _Shawn._

By now, the pair had made their way over to the couch and positioned themselves on opposite ends. Shawn was clutching a throw pillow to his chest, idly playing with the fringes. Gus looked down at his own hands and for the first time realized that he was still clutching his cereal spoon with a death grip. He watched as Shawn attempted to braid some of the pillow fringes together as he placed the spoon back in the bowl where it belonged.

For just a second, Shawn stopped fidgeting and looked up at his friend. "You know, I didn't tell her, Gus."

"Tell who... what?" Gus had a feeling he already knew, but he still asked, as a courtesy. It was just one of those questions. R-H-E-T-O-R-I-C-A-L. But Shawn answered anyways.

"In the hospital. With Jules. I never actually said it. I didn't tell her that I..." Gus didn't force Shawn to finish the sentence. Or didn't let him. He'd heard it both ways.

"I know, Shawn." _You made that much clear right before you ran out on me at the hospital._ "But what _were _youtwo talking about in there that whole time?"

Shawn shrugged. "Mostly this."

And with that, Shawn pulled a tiny object out of his pocket and pressed it into the palm of Gus's hand. The object was small, round, and unexpected, but it fit perfectly into Gus's cupped palm. Gus looked down at his hand quizzically, surprised, and then slowly his features lit up into smile as he curled his fingers around the gift - the Captain Delicious secret decoder ring that was now finally, rightfully _his_.


End file.
